When the Stars Play Hooky
by FrankandJoe3
Summary: It was a simple enough question, and it shouldn't have hurt as much as it did. "Is Batman your dad?"


**This idea has been in my drafts for some time now, and I'm working my way up and out. I'll get to the requests before long, I'm sorry. As for now, here's an idea to which I only had the quotes fleshed out to.**

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It was the kind of night where even the stars didn't want to be out.

The moon was little more than a suggestion in the sky, indistinguishable from the blackness of space encompassing it, and the wind had a sharper bite than the wolves its howls resembled. Aside from the few street lights that the city actually still maintained, growing dimmer after every bout of flickering, the streets of the city were entirely cast in shadow and seemed to blend into the sky between the cracks in the surrounding buildings.

On the rooftops of these buildings, masked both in darkness and in costume, six young heroes were set across the map in teams of two with a name on their tongue and a face in their mind. Fingers itched on grappling hooks and bows to move from the positions they'd been holding for some time, but no one moved, and everyone kept their eyes trained on the darkness below.

Spending a night scouring the darkness certainly wasn't any of their ideas of a fun time, but no one was going to accuse this of just being 'busy work'. They needed the Justice League to trust them. It also didn't hurt that one of their members was nursing a broken wrist. 'Busy work' was admittedly just what they needed. Sitting in the same place for a few hours, though, was not. When someone finally had the courage to break the silence over the communicators, the wind seemed to sigh in relief with the rest of them.

"Westward perimeter clear," Robin's voice came out rusty, having not been used in the last few hours.

"South side clean, but we've got a truck blocking access point D," Artemis followed quickly, glad to hear someone who wasn't Kid Flash. "Do we investigate?"

There was a silence over the radio, and for a moment, everyone dreaded that they would fall back into the hours of quiet that had made the waiting all the more painful- or in Artemis' case, watching her speedster teammate struggle with his ADHD, which was just as if not more painful.

"Negative," Superboy interrupted. "We've got perps coming your way from the back. Could be nothing, but they're packing."

"Pursue and intercept," Aqualad ordered from beside Robin, missing the surprised glance his teammate offered him.

"Roger that. Pursuit in progress," a very excited Kid Flash made himself known.

"Do you think you'll need back up?" Robin asked, almost hopeful.

"Not a chance," Kid Flash laughed. "We'll check back in 10."

Kid Flash and Artemis left their post to investigate, broken wrist and all, and the remaining two teams started to fall back into a silence when Aqualad took up the initiative to carry on the conversation.

"East side?"

"Got a visual on the perps. They're heading our way," Superboy sounded again, and then addressed Kid Flash and Artemis again. "Circle back, guys. We'll handle this."

"Don't even think about it, Supey," Kid Flash didn't waste a moment on the reply.

"He might be coming your way. Get to your post," Superboy tried to order.

Artemis sounded exhausted when she laughed, and it took her a moment to reply as she struggled to even keep her partner in eyesight from the sounds of it.

"We'll be a few minutes max. Cover for us if you see anyone," she said like she was asking, but there wasn't really an option to deny the request.

The Kryptonian was reluctant to accept his defeat, so it was Miss Martian who assured the archer that they were covered in their absence. Superboy's silence was very passive aggressive. It seemed to settle things.

"East side, keep us updated," Robin closed. "Everyone else, stay on alert."

When the communicators fell silent again, it was just Aqualad and Robin alone again on the rooftop. The young acrobat was sitting on the ledge of the roof, his boots swinging in a child-like manner in the air, and he had a heat map pulled up of the area in a projection above his glove. The thermals on his mask were activated as well, giving his eye slats a nice red shade. He was just about to start humming a song he couldn't quite remember the words to when Aqualad came up to the ledge beside him and lightly cleared his throat.

"Robin, can I ask you something?"

The Atlantean was soft spoken in the question, as he often tended to be, and Robin felt comfortable enough to call him by name here. They weren't quite civvies, but they _were_ alone- or at least as alone as you can get on missions like these.

Interested, although slightly worried, he turned off the heat map and lifted a hand to flick off his thermals, looking over the team's leader. The blond had lowered the binoculars he had been using to watch the night down to the ledge of the roof, but besides distracted, he seemed okay. There was no visible nervousness in his posture, and Robin didn't see anything to worry about. Feeling better, he turned the heat map and his thermals back on in a fluid motion, keeping the map in his peripheral as he looked at his partner.

"Yeah, shoot," he shrugged.

"Is Batman your father?"

If the quiet between them had been a 'silence' before, what with its slight humming and occasional small talk, the quiet to follow was as deafening as trying to scream into the dead of space. Even the howl of the wind seemed to have stilled for them. It dragged on without a breath, without a blink, until Robin managed to swallow thickly and shifted a little.

"I just assumed-" Kaldur started, apologetically.

Robin raised the glove that wasn't projecting the empty heat map to stop him, and he stopped. He kept his palm raised and held onto the impossible silence for only a moment, as though he were tucking it away to keep to himself.

"No, it's alright," he insisted, voice nearly inaudible behind the faint whistle of the wind. "He's not."

The silence that he had tucked away started to show face again, but he was the one to stifle it. He knew in the dark beneath his mask that his expression would be impossible to read, so he worried less on his own behalf, and more on his mentor's.

"What made you think he was?" he didn't leave much time for the older boy to think. "Do we look alike?"

The thirteen year old knew the answer to the question before he had asked it: no. It was 'no' in the sense of asking someone on diet if they would like the last piece of the obviously delicious, but obviously unhealthy dessert. It's said, and a good part of the speaker obviously means it, but a worse part of the speaker, the part that made them need the diet in the first place, means something entirely different.

Essentially, he himself could point out similarities, but they weren't enough to be related. Dark hair and daddy issues didn't make a family.

His worry didn't fade when the Atlantean shook his head, but the other's smile certainly helped put to rest some of the worse thoughts. Even Kid Flash didn't know who Batman was to him, besides the man who had saved him from a very dark place. Kaldur couldn't have heard anything from anyone outside of Batman, and his guardian would sooner streak through Gotham City than out the both of them.

"The other day, when he asked to speak to me alone, you seemed very frustrated with me," Kaldur explained, and it took a lot for Robin to not sigh in relief. "I was trying to make sense of it."

The dark haired boy ran a hand through his hair as he pretended to see something on the heat map, zooming in on a spot of nothing as he tried to come up with an answer. There wasn't a thing he could say here that would make sense of his reaction outside of blaming teenager angst or explaining the whole 'not quite my dad' situation, so he decided to just say neither.

"It's... complicated. I'm sorry."

"I understand," Kaldur bowed his head, and he seemed to drop the subject as he lifted up the binoculars again.

A silence picked up between them again, but it was more comfortable this time. The Atlantean had a song soft on his lips in another language, words that seemed to entwine with those before and after them, and it took the acrobat a little too long to recognize it as a lullaby. The sentiment put into each foreign word was a comfort in itself, and when Kaldur stopped, Robin took up humming it to himself.

There were a few passersby and pedestrians that rose a false alarm throughout their perimeter, but they were all clean, and Kid Flash and Artemis returned to their post empty handed before too long. It had apparently _just_ been a milk truck. They had checked inside of the containers, and anywhere else they could think to, scaring the wits out of the old man driving through the city.

Just like that, they were back to square one and caffeine pills were downed to offset the start of yawning. The fresh kick of energy was nice, and the starless sky was starting to grow on them. It was very nearly peaceful.

"Do your parents know that you're Batman's sidekick, then?" Kaldur broke what was very nearly peace.

Robin very visibly flinched. Once he realized he had done it, he tried to brush off the action by blaming the wind under his breath, but every inch of him all but screamed 'uncomfortable' as he tried to seem just the opposite. Kaldur took a small step back and looked away, not failing to catch note of the reaction.

"You don't have to answer. That was insensitive of me. I forgot that Batman forbade you from telling anything about your secret identity," he apologized, bowing his head.

The thirteen year old was quiet at first, and then he gave a little sigh that was frustrated and pained and impatient and very nearly almost everything else all at once before he ran a shaking hand through his hair. Above everything else, he felt impossibly like a jerk now, and he couldn't swallow it.

"It's not that," he managed, giving a tiny whining sound and running his hand through his hair again. "I..."

He held his hair up from his forehead, the widow's peak standing out in the night, and were the moon more confident, he knew Kaldur would have found him familiar.

"Never mind," the Atlantean said very casually, pressing on a small smile.

Robin gave the sound again, frustrated and scared and feeling so very small, and then he turned off the heat map. He turned off the thermals, and then he turned so he was straddling the ledge of the building. His eyes, still hidden behind the one-sided panes of the domino mask, met Kaldur's.

"No," he said suddenly, and Kaldur looked very confused, so the acrobat gave a small clench of his fists and explained. "My... parents... me being Robin... They... don't know."

Kaldur's eyebrows raised in surprise, and then they furrowed in confusion, and he tilted his head in just the slightest. It wasn't like the young hero to give out details about his personal life, and he didn't want to press, but it almost seemed like Robin was longing to tell him, so he let himself press a little deeper.

"How do they not know?" he asked, setting his binoculars down on the ledge. "This life isn't easily hidden. It consumes our time. Surely they've noticed that you're gone for... impossibly long hours."

Robin bowed his head and rubbed at the inside of his opposite arm with a tiny sound that could have easily just been the wind.

"I don't see them often."

He paused and looked down over the side of the building to the ground, to the darkness, and absentmindedly sniffled. When he lifted his head again, he got quieter. A lot quieter.

"Sometimes... I think I'm a bad son," he said, and he had to look back down over the edge, rubbing hard at the inside of his arm now as his voice continued losing volume. "I should visit more often, but I... just... _don't_."

Kaldur couldn't see his eyes, but he didn't need to to see the sorrow they held because his voice carried every ounce of it, even as quiet as it had gotten. He knew he shouldn't push, but he was just _so curious_. Robin didn't just _reveal_ stuff like this. He was the boy who wore sunglasses to try and hide his eye color. He didn't share _anything_ , yet here they were.

"You don't live with them?" the Atlantean asked, a little surprised.

An expression rippled over the acrobat's face and his lip seemed to tremble for a moment, but when Kaldur blinked, it was still again and he blamed the lack of light. The boy's face was tighter now, though, and his brows seemed to be drawn tighter together.

"... Not in a while," Robin admitted, and then he gave a sad and painful laugh that hurt to hear. "A few years, actually."

"Did something happen?" Kaldur pressed.

Robin's face tightened again and pain ran through it, hovering for a moment, and then the acrobat turned around and dangled both feet over the edge again. He turned on his heat map and thermals again, and just like that, he was putting up his guard and it was as though nothing had changed.

"Sorry, Kaldur. I can't. Sec..." he said quickly, and when his voice broke, he coughed it off, "secret identities, you know?"

Kaldur watched him sadly, unable to read anything from the boy who seemed so much smaller now, sitting on the ledge.

"I shouldn't have pushed," he murmured, lifting his binoculars again.

"S'fine," Robin said too quickly for it to be true.

They were quiet again, unspoken questions littered between them like the stars should've been in the sky above, and neither looked at the other until the communicator crackled some time later.

"This is east, apprehended the perps. He was there. We're good to go."

While 'good to go' was something to be argued, the young heroes didn't argue, and Kaldur watched the five foot mystery use his grappling hook to get a head start on catching up with the others.

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 **-F.J. III**


End file.
